Welcome to the new Clothier & Head web site. We have designed it with the hope that our many visitors — current and future clients, students, prospective employees and friends of the Firm — will find interesting, useful, and insightful information.
Clothier & Head Insights Weblog will include short, frequently updated posts arranged chronologically on topics of interest and concern to our visitors. We invite you to check the Blog often for posts of specific interest to you.
I thought we’d begin with a short discussion of direction and strategic focus. As a business, Clothier & Head has set it sights on a specific goal. Simply stated, our goal is:
To be the premier, local public accounting and business advisory firm in Seattle, in fact and by reputation, serving growing private companies and individuals with significantly complex financial situations.
This goal is supported by three strategies that focus our work on a daily basis. We refer to this as the Three B Strategy: Best People, Best Clients, and Best Practices.
Taken together, this strategy represents both the means by which we will accomplish “premier” and differentiate our firm from all others.
Here’s a quick look at each of the B’s.
Our Best People strategy requires us to recruit great people, provide them with better resources, train them more deeply, and develop them more fully than our competitors. Success here is fundamental to everything else we seek to do. The Best People strategy is the differentiator among professional service firms. We believe our professional staff are some of the most talented and insightful professionals you will find anywhere, and we continually work to make further progress.
Our Best Clients strategy brings focus to our client service and business development activities. As this relates to business clients, our client base is comprised of growing private companies seeking assistance with their planning, compliance, and business consulting needs. On the individual client side, our clients are most commonly individuals and families with significantly complex financial affairs requiring the best and most insightful counsel available anywhere.
Incidentally, the Best Client strategy and Best People strategy go hand-in-hand. We notice the best people seek interesting and challenging work as a primary source of job satisfaction and personal growth. We find our recruitment and retention programs are more effective when our people apply their skills on difficult and challenging client matters. At the same time, we also notice we are more effective at meeting our client service objectives with the best people. We conclude that success in the Best People and the Best Client strategy are both necessary and are mutually reinforcing. Together, they represent one virtuous circle.
Our Best Practices strategy supports everything else. I am pleased to say, our firm is committed to incorporating Best Practices. In 2006 we have made tremendous improvement in our use of communication and computing technologies, as well as in our industry leading process improvements. Our Paperless Initiative is one example of both technological and process improvements. By January 1, 2007, all client service processes will be fully paperless. Additionally, we intend to implement a variety of Flex Work initiatives in 2007 that wouldn’t be possible without the computing platform and paperless processes currently being put into place.
Finally, I have one final thought . . . We know in the end our success depends on implementation and execution of our Three B Strategy. We believe consistent effort brought by engaged people in a continuous direction will make us the premier, local public accounting and business advisory firm in Seattle.
Said differently, we measure our progress in a series of small steps taken each day, not in any single great leap forward. This is why, in the words of Kirk Clothier, we are committed to “enjoying the journey.”
So far, we think it’s working!
